Al-Mashhadani rejects cabinet no-confidence vote

THI-QAR / IraqiNews.com: Leader of the United Iraqi Alliance Sami al-Askari on Monday blamed the bodies that caused the resignation of former Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, noting that he paid the price in his rejection of the cabinet’s no-confidence vote. “He refused to vote no-confidence on al-Maliki’s government because he considered it the best until now,” al-Askari, who is a member of the Daawa party, told IraqiNews.com. He unveiled a plan by some political bodies to give a member of the Islamic party the chairmanship of the parliament as a step to vote no-confidence of the premier to sack him. On December 23, the Parliament accepted the resignation presented by Mahmoud al-Mashhadani during an extraordinary session after a heated debate erupted between al-Mashhadani and members of parliamentary committees over the issue of Iraqi Journalist Muntadhar al-Zaydi, who threw a pair of shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush at a Baghdad-based press conference last week. SH (S)/SR 1